There is a well known bill discriminating and counting apparatus, in which bills having mixed denominations are collectively received from a hopper, the bills are fed and carried one by one, the bills are counted while the denomination and authenticity of the bills are discriminated, and the total amount of the normal bill or the number of bills in each denomination is counted and displayed (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-296801).
A structure and an operation of a conventional bill discriminating and counting apparatus will be described with reference to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a longitudinal cross-sectional view showing an internal structure of the conventional bill discriminating and counting apparatus.
A feeding roller 5 feeds the bill placed in a hopper 1 into a transport path of the bill discriminating and counting apparatus, and the bill is carried by plural carrying rollers 6.
During the bill carrying, the bill passes through detection sensors 7a and 7b, and a bill discriminating sensor 8 discriminates the denomination and authenticity. Then, the bill passes through a detection sensor 7c, and the bill is received between blades of a rotating impeller 9 when the bill is normal and the bill is aligned and collected in a stacker 2. On the other hand, when the bill discriminating sensor judges that the bill is a forged bill, a solenoid 10 is operated to move a branching pawl 11 downward, and the bill is delivered to a rejection section 3. A branching position detection sensor 12 detects whether or not the branching pawl is actually operated even if the solenoid 10 is turned on. The numeral 4 designates an operation and display section which performs various settings in performing the bill discriminating and counting process and displays the counted total amount and the like.
In the bill discriminating and counting apparatus, when the bill fed from the hopper 1 is jammed in the transport path by some sort of reason, output of one of the detection sensors 7a to 7c becomes abnormal, the bill discriminating and counting apparatus is disabled in the following operations, and the apparatus is stopped. Even if the bill is not actually jammed, sometimes the apparatus judges that the jam is occurred due to abnormality of the detection sensor itself (this is called “fake jam”).
Furthermore, sometimes there is occurred a problem that the apparatus recognizes the two bills as one bill because an interval of the two bills is narrowed and overlapped at some point, although the apparatus initially recognizes the two bills. The problem is called “number discrepancy”. It is judged when the numbers of times the bill passes through the detection sensors 7a to 7c are not matched with one another.
In such cases, the trouble is solved by removing the jammed bill or by pressing a reset button to start all over again. From the standpoint of recurrence prevention, it is necessary to trace the cause to perform necessary maintenance.
In this case, an operator who uses the bill counting apparatus does not perform the actual maintenance, but specialized maintenance personnel perform the maintenance. However, the maintenance personnel can hardly get detailed and correct information on an internal status of the apparatus in the event of trouble from the operator.
In order to solve the problem, there is proposed a cash processing apparatus equipped with a state information logging device which sequentially records the operating states of the sections in the apparatus (for example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 63-269270). The state information logging device is intended to search the point where the bill is jammed, and the device can specify the jam point by storing output data of a sensor as a log at timing the output state of the sensor is changed.
However, in an embodiment of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 63-269270, there is no disclosure concerning the events except for the jam. In addition to the jam, it is necessary that the point, which becomes the cause can be specified after the error such as the number discrepancy, is occurred.